End PL allow characters to begin at 50

[El D]

7 hours ago, battlewraith said:

Playing the game at level 50. Exactly what happens now when they pl a character past all the content that they know they don't want to play.

Proposals like this don't mean more skipping of content. People are doing that already. The actual gist of it is skipping the hours required to pl, that is the only thing that would be different from the way things are now.

 

Choosing to play a particular branch of content over another to gain progress is not remotely the same as literally skipping every piece of content in the game, starting at max level with a single button press, and eschewing progression entirely. Even power-leveling a character to 50, as quick as it can be, still requires time spent in-game running some type of content. One requires actually playing the game in some aspect or another and the other is not playing the game at all. They are not the same thing. That's the only 'gist' that matters, and it's one that's not going to change.

 

Going back a step though, the Beta server already has this function. If the community did want an 'instant-50' button, if it were somehow equivalent to power-leveling and was a common-sense, workable solution that would promote player interaction and community growth... why hasn't the player base as a whole migrated to the Beta server where the the instant-50 button already exists? It isn't like they can't keep the same friends and chat channels as on Live, after all. Why has the community remained on Live, where 'actually having to play the game' is the only option? It can't be because it's too hard to migrate over - the Beta server has commands to get literally everything a player has remade in minutes and directly import their build without having to touch Wentworths or run any missions at all, as well as fully stock their influence and unlock every locked contact or desired badge. The only thing players would have to put any effort into remaking would be bases, and even then if it's the thing they find fun to do, I'm sure they'd still be motivated to do it.

 

Yet everyone remains on Live, despite the solution some folks say they want already existing literally right next door. The resources and capability are already there, has been for months and months and months, and yet the community - despite this being a method available to anyone with a working account - has continuously ignored it in favor of playing on Live.

Edited October 26, 2022 by El D

[battlewraith]

 

1 hour ago, El D said:

Choosing to play a particular branch of content over another to gain progress is not remotely the same as literally skipping every piece of content in the game and starting at max level with a single button press and eschew progression entirely. Even power-leveling a character to 50, as quick as it can be, still requires time spent in-game running some type of content. One requires actually playing the game in some aspect or another and the other is not playing the game at all. They are not the same thing. That's the only 'gist' that matters, and it's one that's not going to change.

 

That's not even an accurate description. Progression does not end when you hit 50. You don't skip every piece of content in the game to hit 50. And a lot of players exemp down to play the earlier content when they are 50. Not to mention the fact that players have likely done this decades old content many times already on different characters over the years.

 

The "gist" here is that you want to mandate that other people waste their time somehow, apparently because the supposed fun of doing that early content simply wasn't enough.

 

1 hour ago, El D said:

Yet everyone remains on Live, despite the solution some folks say they want already existing literally right next door. The resources and capability are already there, has been for months and months and months, and yet the community - despite this being a method available to anyone with a working account - has continuously ignored it in favor of playing on Live.

 

This has been answered over and over again. People don't want to play on beta because there is no population, they don't want to leave their friends and sgs, and it is subject to wipes. 

[El D]

13 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

 

 

That's not even an accurate description. Progression does not end when you hit 50. You don't skip every piece of content in the game to hit 50. And a lot of players exemp down to play the earlier content when they are 50. Not to mention the fact that players have likely done this decades old content many times already on different characters over the years.

 

The "gist" here is that you want to mandate that other people waste their time somehow, apparently because the supposed fun of doing that early content simply wasn't enough.

 

 

I never said progression ended at level 50. My post was focused on the required progression from level 1 to 50, which has a long-established requirement of 'You must actually play the game to get this far.' Also yes, an instant-50 button would skip every single piece of content in the game to get to level 50 because that's literally what an instant-50 button does. A player would not have to play any missions, run any arcs, or do anything to hit level 50. That's the entire focus of this thread, and the focus of my prior post. The ability to go back and 'run that skipped content later' holds no relevance because the point of the content is to be run as a progression path to level 50. That removes the entire purpose of level ranges and content existing at lower levels at all.

 

By the by, I'm not mandating how other players 'waste their time' either. I'm simply repeating the long established way the game works - a player wants to get to level 50? They have to actually play the game to get there. That's not me telling you how to spend your time, that's the game telling you how it works.

[battlewraith]

1 hour ago, El D said:

That's not me telling you how to spend your time, that's the game telling you how it works.

You're objecting to a proposal on the basis of how the game has worked up to this point. If this mentality was consistently applied, you would be objecting to ANY change in game mechanics because that's not how the game works. 

 

1 hour ago, El D said:

That removes the entire purpose of level ranges and content existing at lower levels at all.

 

No it doesn't. For people who enjoy that content, it's there. You default to this black and white thinking that says that having the ability to skip over early content makes that early content irrelevant for everyone. In reality it wouldn't change anything for people who enjoy the traditional leveling. For people who like to start at 50, it would allow them to immediately go to the content they enjoy. And then there would be a range of people inbetween who sometimes go straight to 50 and other times follow a more traditional progression.

 

1 hour ago, El D said:

I never said progression ended at level 50.

 

1 hour ago, battlewraith said:

Choosing to play a particular branch of content over another to gain progress is not remotely the same as literally skipping every piece of content in the game and starting at max level with a single button press and eschew progression entirely.

 

Sure looks that way.

[roleki]

Alright, I'm not talking specifically to or about any one poster here, but, my apologies in advance.  My responses tend to address a mindset as a whole - as if I were a loud drunk in a bar, not the individual people in possession of that mindset - as if I were a quiet drunk in a bar.  I realize that in an internet forum, all anyone knows for sure is that I must be drunk.

Hey, that should be my signature.

Anyway, as someone who has PL'd each of my 100-odd 50s on HC, I must say I have absolutely zero interest in anything resembling Insta-50 in any form whatsoever and find the very idea of an Insta-50 to be laughingly stupid.

 

No matter your opinion on the market as it exists NOW, you will yearn for these days longingly if anything like Insta-50 is introduced to the game.  Imagine if anyone who logged into the game could generate page upon page of instant 50s without generating the corresponding drops/resources from their leveling process.  In one move, you've exponentially driven up demand while drastically reducing the supply, and likely managed to gut the market for midgame resources in the process.  

And while I think the dangers are often overstated, there is the risk that folks gifted with insta-50s will get bored with the game faster, and that insta-50 would introduce even more 'clueless' characters into the general population.  

I just don't see any benefit whatsoever to Insta-50.   But then, I've never seen the harm in PLing, either.  The process takes 3-4 hours.  Name me a game you could invest 3 or 4 hours into it and still find people who would accuse you of having not played the game.  Shit, the majority of games released since 2004, you're on your second or third playthrough by that time.  But around here, if you PL or farm, you're crusty jugglers.  

 

But nah, ixnay on Insta-50.  If that's what people wanted to do, they would do it on the test server, or one of the other shards that let you do it.  Think about it: the people who would be accused of wanting everything handed to them, who would be accused of breaking the game just so they could cut a few more minutes off the PL process, they are IN the live game, instead of just migrating en masse to any one of the numerous avenues where instant gratification is already available.  That tells me they don't just 'accept' the current process, they actually prefer it.  

[El D]

10 hours ago, battlewraith said:

You're objecting to a proposal on the basis of how the game has worked up to this point. If this mentality was consistently applied, you would be objecting to ANY change in game mechanics because that's not how the game works.

 

I'm objecting to this specific proposal because it will not ever happen, and to continue to push for it against everyone accurately explaining why it won't happen - from the disastrous in-game effects to how it runs counter to core game and content design to its direct opposition to literal years of direct evidence in how the community works - is, unlike personal opinions on what in-game content constitutes 'fun' or 'not fun,' actually an objective waste of time.

 

This is a suggestion forum, not a speculation forum. The only value a proposal has comes from its use as an workable solution to an actual problem, which means it should be something actually actionable that solves a real issue - I.E. something the devs both can and will do to fix a tangible obstacle. Sure, they could do this but A) They're not going to and B) It solves no problem (in fact it makes a ton more, and exacerbates others). The game is ridiculously easy to progress through as it is, as you yourself have continually pointed out. They're not going to give players an 'I Win' button that expedites that even further, along with the other major issues that the AE removal from starting zones was meant to curb. Not for an inf cost, not for a donation, not for a certain badge or task force reward. MMOs are built on the gameplay loop of 'make a character, run through the content, make new/different character and do it again.' That's what builds community connections between players, investment in players' characters, and promotes knowledge of game mechanics. An instant-50 token breaks the structure of how the game is played and interacted with at the very core.

Edited October 26, 2022 by El D

[Grouchybeast]

6 hours ago, roleki said:

No matter your opinion on the market as it exists NOW, you will yearn for these days longingly if anything like Insta-50 is introduced to the game.  Imagine if anyone who logged into the game could generate page upon page of instant 50s without generating the corresponding drops/resources from their leveling process.  In one move, you've exponentially driven up demand while drastically reducing the supply, and likely managed to gut the market for midgame resources in the process.  

 

This is always my thought when insta-50s are proposed,  Crash in market supply, spike in demand, more volatility and higher prices across the board.  (But I don't say anything, because I quite enjoy the market, and it would certainly shake things up.)

[Ruin Mage]

Oh yeah, the Market would take a sweet little swan dive into Live-levels of hell.

Anyone want purple IOs costing 1bil-2bil again?

[roleki]

6 minutes ago, Shadeknight said:

Oh yeah, the Market would take a sweet little swan dive into Live-levels of hell.

Anyone want purple IOs costing 1bil-2bil again?

Even if the Devs chose to seed... it could take weeks or months to hit the right balance and have a marketplace that functions in any recognizable way.  Given that - for better or for worse - the market is a HUGE part of the game, anything even close to instability would be ruinous in terms of interest/retention. 

[battlewraith]

10 hours ago, roleki said:

No matter your opinion on the market as it exists NOW, you will yearn for these days longingly if anything like Insta-50 is introduced to the game.  Imagine if anyone who logged into the game could generate page upon page of instant 50s without generating the corresponding drops/resources from their leveling process.  In one move, you've exponentially driven up demand while drastically reducing the supply, and likely managed to gut the market for midgame resources in the process.  

 

It would probably do very little. First of all, the drops/resources from spending the time farming up one character is pretty negligible. Secondly, people farm to get resources as well as leveling characters. That doesn't stop just because they don't need to level a 50. I have pages of 50s that have no enhancements in them--I would need to do a hell of a lot of grinding in order to outfit them all.

 

These boards are hilarious with regard to how people overreact to issues in contradictory ways. When page 4 hit, people went off on farming and how it was evil and destructive to the game because of the flow of inf theoretically spiking inflation. Now talking about insta-50s, people are saying we can't have that because....it will reduce farming? Lol what?

 

10 hours ago, roleki said:

And while I think the dangers are often overstated, there is the risk that folks gifted with insta-50s will get bored with the game faster, and that insta-50 would introduce even more 'clueless' characters into the general population.  

 

The dangers are always overstated. And while it's possible that new players would become bored more quickly and/or be more clueless--even though these people can already bypass content through people pling them--naysayers always drop out the possible consequences of the status quo. Which is that every time there is some new or interesting thing added to this game, people who want to play this content on a new 50 have to repeat content that they've done for years, sit on a farm for hours, or do some event like ToT. The danger is the omnipresent one--that players will look at other new games coming out and say "nah, I'm good." 

 

11 hours ago, roleki said:

I just don't see any benefit whatsoever to Insta-50.   But then, I've never seen the harm in PLing, either.  The process takes 3-4 hours.  

 

Maybe you don't mind wasting a few hours as a tax to play content you want. I could do without it. I think a lot of people could do without it.

 

That being said, there have been a number of suggestions for how to do this. I favor a recycling option. Some people want something that is bought or earned ingame. Maybe there is a timer: you get one insta 50 a month. There are various ways that something like this could be implemented but if you suggest it here you have to penetrate this miasma of Chicken Little bullshit that assumes unfettered insta 50s as far as the eye can see that will wreck the economy and camp all the desirable names and give super judgmental veteran players apoplexy when they pug (why are they pugging?).

[battlewraith]

10 hours ago, El D said:

I'm objecting to this specific proposal because it will not ever happen, and to continue to push for it against everyone accurately explaining why it won't happen - from the disastrous in-game effects to how it runs counter to core game and content design to its direct opposition to literal years of direct evidence in how the community works - is, unlike personal opinions on what in-game content constitutes 'fun' or 'not fun,' actually an objective waste of time.

 

This is your opinion. And unless someone has a gun to your head, it's your choice to waste your time. Don't complain to me about it.

10 hours ago, El D said:

This is a suggestion forum, not a speculation forum.

 

Again, that's not your call. Go make your own game and run the forums with an iron fist. 

Even if this group of devs has no intention of ever implementing something like this, I still think this is a conversation worth having. It gives them a picture of what players are like and what their priorities are.

[roleki]

9 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

 

It would probably do very little. First of all, the drops/resources from spending the time farming up one character is pretty negligible. Secondly, people farm to get resources as well as leveling characters. That doesn't stop just because they don't need to level a 50. I have pages of 50s that have no enhancements in them--I would need to do a hell of a lot of grinding in order to outfit them all.

 

These boards are hilarious with regard to how people overreact to issues in contradictory ways. When page 4 hit, people went off on farming and how it was evil and destructive to the game because of the flow of inf theoretically spiking inflation. Now talking about insta-50s, people are saying we can't have that because....it will reduce farming? Lol what?

 

 

The dangers are always overstated. And while it's possible that new players would become bored more quickly and/or be more clueless--even though these people can already bypass content through people pling them--naysayers always drop out the possible consequences of the status quo. Which is that every time there is some new or interesting thing added to this game, people who want to play this content on a new 50 have to repeat content that they've done for years, sit on a farm for hours, or do some event like ToT. The danger is the omnipresent one--that players will look at other new games coming out and say "nah, I'm good." 

 

 

Maybe you don't mind wasting a few hours as a tax to play content you want. I could do without it. I think a lot of people could do without it.

 

That being said, there have been a number of suggestions for how to do this. I favor a recycling option. Some people want something that is bought or earned ingame. Maybe there is a timer: you get one insta 50 a month. There are various ways that something like this could be implemented but if you suggest it here you have to penetrate this miasma of Chicken Little bullshit that assumes unfettered insta 50s as far as the eye can see that will wreck the economy and camp all the desirable names and give super judgmental veteran players apoplexy when they pug (why are they pugging?).

 

No time to break this all into pieces, but, I average 1 recipe for resale per minute, per character when I farm.  If it takes me 4 hours to level a 50, that's ~480 recipe drops I take to the market between the farmer and the doorsitter.  Spread that across my hundred or so 50s, that's ~48,000 drops at the auction house.  Throw in the 2 hours it takes to get a character to VL3 with everything unlocked, that's another ~24,000 drops.  So, my farming has led directly to at least ~72,000 recipes/enhancements being listed/sold at the Auction House.  Based on what people claim their inf rate is while farming, I don't even think I'm an outlier, I'm middle-of-the-pack in terms of volume/frequency.  ~72,000 items may not seem like a lot over three years, but, multiply that times however many other farmers there are that do the same traffic as I do, or more.  It adds up, and I guarantee the absence would be noticeable at the AH.  There's no way it could NOT be.

 

As far as the forum weirdness about Farming goes, you'll never hear me braying against farming.  Personally, I don't think HC would be here today without it, but I am basing that opinion on extrapolation of what was in the HC data dump they did back in 2020.  Maybe there really are only two farmers left, but... come on.  If that were the case, AP wouldn't have been drowning under the influence of AE.  

 

If Insta-50 were inevitable, it would need to take the form of something you only ever get one of per account, or one per Page release, or something.  It absolutely cannot be something that can be purchased/bought/bartered for, else that system - no matter how it is set up - will be abused to the detriment of all.  I'm not being Chicken Little here, I'm being pragmatic.  Nobody LIKES sinking 3 or 4 hours into a character, and if there's a way to obviate that investment, people will do it, and do it as often as they can.  Even if the procedure to do so was only 15 minutes more efficient than PLing, they would still do it.  At the end of the day, we're barely above locusts in that regard.  

 

Not saying any of this to refute your assertions, just providing the rationale behind my own.

[battlewraith]

1 hour ago, roleki said:

It adds up, and I guarantee the absence would be noticeable at the AH.  There's no way it could NOT be.

 

Yes but look at what you're doing to add things up. First of all, you're assuming that the market as it is now, represents all people who are pling actively selling drops that they get in the course of pling a new 50. I don't and I never have in the course of Homecoming's existence. If I assume that I'm not an outlier, that the majority of people pling are like me and that the bulk of the drops are coming from farmers (including afkers) who are farming to earn then this problem immediately goes away. And getting a free 50 does not exempt you from grinding the resources to enhance it. You would still be grinding content to pay for that.

 

Secondly, you arbitrarily threw in the 2 hours of grinding to VL3.  No, the character is already 50 at that point. You can't use this in the calculus arguing against an insta-50.

 

Thirdly, you added up all of the earnings for all of your characters for three years, multiplied by all of the farmers who are assumed to be doing the same thing in the course of pling. Yeah, that would make a big difference but it would only be relevant if you're assuming that an insta 50 option was available ALL the time, and that the people who routinely farm and sell items would stop doing that activity altogether. 

 

I understand your rationale but it makes some extreme assumptions that are not necessary.

[El D]

2 hours ago, battlewraith said:

Again, that's not your call. Go make your own game and run the forums with an iron fist. 

Even if this group of devs has no intention of ever implementing something like this, I still think this is a conversation worth having. It gives them a picture of what players are like and what their priorities are.

 

Amazing how 'go play a different game' is an acceptable reply now, when earlier it was apparently crossing some unacceptable boundary. Despite the fact that earlier it was in response to... the comments of 'just use the server in this game where the thing this thread is proposing already exists and can be freely utilized by anyone who plays.'

 

Heck, I'd figure that the server framework alone has already indicated what the playerbase's priorities and thoughts are. The devs already allow instant-50s under restrictions they've deemed acceptable - I.E. solely for impermanent testing purposes in an environment that does not guarantee they will be kept around - while Live requires actual playtime and XP gain to advance and the playerbase is... uniformly fine with that given the continual lack of a mass migration to the place that has instant-50s, the lack of any posts complaining about 'Where did my 10 pages of Beta-server instant-50s go? This should be changed!' All that on top of the apparent overwhelming drudgery and waste of time that leveling up is seen as by some posters.

 

That said, you do you. I never claimed to have authority over the forums and absolutely do not want the responsibility that'd come with that. Neither am I'm telling you that you can't post about this. I'm just saying that posting about this proposal is not going to make it any more likely happen.

Edited October 26, 2022 by El D

[battlewraith]

1 hour ago, El D said:

Amazing how 'go play a different game' is an acceptable reply now, when earlier it was apparently crossing some unacceptable boundary.

Not when it's a response to someone dictating to you the proper way to use these forums. But sure, out of context it looks bad.

 

1 hour ago, El D said:

I'm just saying that posting about this proposal is not going to make it any more likely happen.

Ok, but this is a lot of response for something you're convinced is not going to happen either way. Methinks the lady doth protest too much, but that's just me being me.

[Troo]

It sounds like there are some reasonable concerns that would need addressing. No point in quibbling too much.

 

Assume this was going to happen, how could concerns be addressed?

 

I thought letting folks jump to ~40 would help keep drops flowing as they played or pl'd to 50 and beyond.

 

 

Congratulations to those being able to level up a new character in mere hours. Not everyone can do that.

(To be clear, stated hours likely being an exaggeration in that this typically does not include selecting powers, acquiring enhancements, or slotting, much less creating an epic costume, optional backstory, chasing accolades & incarnates, and funding said new character)

 

 

 

 

[Widower]

Please chill out.

[El D]

42 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

Not when it's a response to someone dictating to you the proper way to use these forums. But sure, out of context it looks bad.

 

Fair enough, in retrospect that comment was more than a bit out of order (both in that I'm not a GM/dev/etc. and the nature of this specific forum). My apologies.

 

41 minutes ago, Troo said:

Assume this was going to happen, how could concerns be addressed?

 

I thought letting folks jump to ~40 would help keep drops flowing as they played or pl'd to 50 and beyond.

 

@Troo I think you're on to something lowering the range, though imo I'd take it even lower - at best a 'start at level 20-25' token. With the new power level adjustments, that'd give players the opportunity to jump right in with a full powerset they've wanted to try but still have a hefty amount of gameplay to get used to how the sets work and what they want to build. Avoids the most commonly PL'ed through levels while enforcing progression for the 'This is pretty much how the end game will work' ranges and still gives plenty of time to accrue inf, recipes, drops, etc.

 

A set up like that... I think I'd be okay with. Probably not purchasable via inf or a mission arc, but as a reward for winning a dev or GM-run contest - something rare where everyone who plays would be on even footing to attain it.

 

Edit: Also that way if it were used on Live without testing on Beta or wherever else first and the player is unhappy with the powersets, then that's on them for wasting the token.

Edited October 26, 2022 by El D

[EmperorSteele]

I'm confused.

 

If you (general you) are so tired of playing the game that you don't want to put in the time to play and level up a level 50 character... what are you going to do with that character if they're an insta-50?

 

Play the game? I thought that's what you were tired of doing?

 

Anecdotally, I've been experiencing some burn out and would like to cut the grind, too. But funny thing, that only makes the burn out WORSE.

 

Fallout, GTA, Skyrim, any game I play, when I get bored with it, I resort to cheat codes to wreck face and have a lol. But, THAT gets boring SUPER quick. Like, within an hour.

 

I suspect that insta 50 would be the same thing. It would be fun making max power toons right out of the box, but it would get old after a while. Like, an hour or two.

 

Also, it would circumvent the name policy thing and let folks sit on names without using them, unless these characters also counted as "level 1" for that purpose like PvP50s do.

[Troo]

Name squatting is a great point.

 

Insta-anything would need to be exempt (potentially flagged as a level 1 for name) OR this could be an opportunity to introduce a Global+Name type convention,

[The_]

15 minutes ago, Troo said:

 introduce a Global+Name type convention,

 

Claimed

[battlewraith]

2 hours ago, EmperorSteele said:

I'm confused.

If you (general you) are so tired of playing the game that you don't want to put in the time to play and level up a level 50 character... what are you going to do with that character if they're an insta-50?

Play the game? I thought that's what you were tired of doing?

 

No. It's weird that the game is this old and people still don't get it but I'll elaborate. 

A lot of people, myself included, prefer to play at 50 when you have all your powers, all your slots, and can build with a certain purpose or playstyle in mind. A recent character I made was a perma lightform PB using a build I got off of the forums. I like it. I do trials and TFs with it. But that build was not possible for most, if not all of the pre-50 content. If that content is not something you enjoy doing on a lowbie character, then you skip it. The best way to keep this game enjoyable is to focus on the things you like doing and minimize the repetitive grindy shit that you've done a million times before. 

 

2 hours ago, Troo said:

OR this could be an opportunity to introduce a Global+Name type convention,

 

I've always had trouble getting names I want and that problem is not going to go away until they do something like a convention that incorporates globals.

[Luminara]

 

I broke this down in a previous post, in yet another "DEER DABS GIB ME FRE FIDDEES PLZKTHXBAI" thread.  Guess it's time to do it again.

 

At any given time, there are ~1000-1500 people playing.  There aren't 25000-37500 purples, to give one example (presuming a desire for 5 sets of 5 enhancements apiece, per player, 25 purple enhancements times 1000-1500), recipes and crafted enhancements combined, on the AH.  There aren't even enough purple recipes and enhancements for 100 players to grab 5 sets of 5, or, in fact, for every one of those 1000-1500 players to purchase one set of 5.  Everyone can verify that just by checking the listings on the AH.  I sat here and counted the number of recipes and enhancements listed last time I did this, and to my knowledge, nothing about drop rates has changed, and the population has remained relatively stable, so I'm confident there hasn't been a gigantic uptick in purple listings since then.

 

Within an hour of freefties going live, the entire purple segment of the market would be empty, including any that have been sitting there for three and a half years (which were probably listed at or near the inf* cap).  The whole fucking thing.  Not a single purple left in any category.  Now the market is devoid of purples, and the trickle coming in doesn't even begin to approach the demand.  Prices instantly shoot up, and because supply is only meeting a few percent of the demand, they will never go down.  Once the purple supply depletes, the prices go straight to 110,000,000-120,000,000 inf*, and they stay there for the rest of the time the HC servers are here.

This scenario will play out across every segment of the market that isn't seeded.  Purples, ATOs, HOs and variants thereof, PvPs, Winter enhancements, they'll all go dry in record time, surge in price and remain out of stock or at single-digit supply with massively inflated prices, because they don't drop frequently (some don't drop at all, like ATOs and Winter enhancements), they can't be rouletted the way uncommons and rares can (can't turn a rare into a purple, or a Winter enhancement, or a HO, et cetera), and their reward merit price is comparatively high.  And, unlike what happened on the original servers, we won't see some purples selling for half the price of others.  We have converters, so even "crappy" purples are worth as much as top tier purples.  Same applies to all of the low drop/no drop items.  They all peg at the same exorbitant prices, none of them will be comparatively cheap.

The uncommon and rare segments would also be heavily impacted.  Uncommons would all but disappear, snatched up by players hoping to cash in on the gold rush by converting them to valuable rares.  As the uncommons dwindled and the prices increased, they'd turn to less expensive rares and convert them.  Prices across the board would go straight up.  And no-one, and I do mean no-one, is going to spend merits on recipes to supply the market, not when merits become the only viable option for the most valued enhancements.  Even at 5 merits for randomized rolls for rare recipes, that's essentially money down the drain.  Sure, we have some players who could prop the market up for a little while, if they spent every waking hour converting their wealth to merits and constantly dumping random recipes on the market, and everyone "behaved" (meaning, didn't immediately purchase the cheap recipes to flip and drive prices up), but they wouldn't do it indefinitely, nor could they, as they'd be functioning at a loss.  I'd speculate that a really aggressive player could sustain this for about a month, maybe two, before he/she burned out or ran out of funds.  A concerted effort by a collaborative group of extremely wealthy players would be more sustainable, but still not an indefinite solution, and it would hand pricing control to an unknown third party... which would, essentially, give them a form of control over their fellow players.

Lower level recipes would experience a drought as devastating as purples, as they just don't drop from higher level foes, and the recipes and enhancements currently available would, as I noted in the previous paragraph, dwindle and vanish.  The Karma, Kismet, Miracle and Basilisk's Gaze segments, for instance, would collapse entirely because those couldn't be obtained by running Hard Mode content/Incarnate content/level 50 content.  Zero listed, thousands bidding.  Prices on "trash" uncommon low level recipes and enhancements would skyrocket as they were snatched up for conversion, furthering the shortage and reducing availability across the entire segment.  Players spending merits wouldn't "waste" their merits on randomized rare rolls, crafting and converting to uncommons to dump on the market, they'd be spending them on the stuff they wanted, like those over-priced purples, or stuff to sell at higher prices than lowbie uncommons.  The only way the market would have any lower level recipes or enhancements would be from players not using the freefty option, or the ones exemplaring down to run low level content... just to acquire recipes... to sell for ridiculous prices...

 

Players could still purchase recipes with reward merits, obviously, but acquiring merits takes time, even if the player is doing it by converting inf* to merits.  That 100,000,000 inf* per hour from farming is only 100 merits, equating to one Winter/PvP/ATO/purple from a merit vendor.  A random rare recipe is 5 merits, which would help stabilize the prices of uncommon and rare recipes and enhancements somewhat, but consider that this now means even a "trash" uncommon recipe has a minimum price of 5,000,000 inf*, as opposed to ~5000  inf* as they are now, and that's just for some garbage that can be converted and resold or, if the player has a lucky conversion (or is just swimming in inf*/merits), used.

 

And that touches on another aspect of the market impact.  We tell ourselves that market prices are capped by merit values, but that discounts transaction fees, crafting fees, converter costs, the player wanting a return on the time invested, and expecting to make a profit.  Market prices won't be capped by merit value, they'll respond to inflationary demands, supply and player interactions and expectations.  An uncommon enhancement won't cost 5,000,000 inf*, it will cost 5,000,000 inf* plus the cost of crafting, and conversion, and transaction fees, and a profit margin.  Merit value is, in truth, just a starting point.  It's unlikely that inf* prices for items on the market would soar too much above their merit value, but rest assured, they absolutely would not be the same.  The inf* cost would always be higher.

 

In short, anything that isn't seeded would disappear rapidly, supply would fall so short of demand that it wouldn't be funny, and prices would go above merit values and not come back down to manageable levels without a total reset.  We'd be right back where we were on the original servers.  And the freefties some people clamored for wouldn't be instantly playable, they'd be in a worse situation than the power-leveled characters, because they wouldn't have a single merit or 1 inf* in their pockets, market prices would be 1000%+ above what they are now and they'd be running around with no enhancements, or only drops/SOs/common IOs, until they ground up enough lucre to pay for their "I made an instant 50 and now I'm going to go run Hard Mode shit!" builds.  Sure, some players have stockpiles of inf* and could shrug off the inflation, but new players would be fucked, non-farmers would be fucked, casual players would be fucked.  And all of the work the HC team put into creating a thriving and stable economy would be flushed down the toilet.

 

It's a bad idea every time it's raised.

[battlewraith]

2 hours ago, Luminara said:

I broke this down in a previous post, in yet another "DEER DABS GIB ME FRE FIDDEES PLZKTHXBAI" thread.  Guess it's time to do it again.

 

Wow. You sound so hip. Really.

 

Your apocalyptic scenario, like the ones other people have brought up, involves some bold assumptions.

 

1. Everyone is going to do this. The entire playerbase. Immediately. This is amusing because half the time people argue that there would be no demand for this sort of thing. Also if that many people would want it--if it would be so wildly popular--why are people so hell bent on not having a reasonable implementation? 

 

2. Everyone is going to immediately buy up everything from the market. Bullshit. First of all you go on a lot about purples. Those are what I need the least. I have a bunch of them in storage or spread out on different characters. The number of enhancements on the market is not the same as the number of enhancements in the game. Secondly, if you don't have a lot of enhancements on hand--you probably don't have a lot of inf either. If you cannot afford things, you're not going to buy them on the market. Thus you're not going to be driving up demand. That means the ones buying all the stuff up on the market would be the people who are already sitting on a pile of cash and can mint a new 50 whenever they feel like it.

 

3. You don't address the most basic question: How many new 50s are created right now over say the course of a month? If you knew that number you could make some reasonable estimation about how an influx of 50s, some of which would fully enhanced with purchases from the auction house, would affect the market. But you don't make any kind of analysis like this and just assume the worst. If I play that game, I can assume that thousands of new 50s are made every month and the market can fairly easily bear an additional influx--maybe a new 50 every month for interested players (maybe around 500-100). If you don't use it, they expire and do not accrue.

Edited October 27, 2022 by battlewraith

[Wavicle]

1 minute ago, battlewraith said:

 

Wow. You sound so hip. Really.

 

Your apocalyptic scenario, like the ones other people have brought up, involves some bold assumptions.

 

1. Everyone is going to do this. The entire playerbase. Immediately. This is amusing because half the time people argue that there would be no demand for this sort of thing. Also if that many people would want it--if it would be so wildly popular--why are people so hell bent on not having a reasonable implementation? 

 

2. Everyone is going to immediately buy up everything from the market. Bullshit. First of all you go on a lot about purples. Those are what I need the least. I have a bunch of them in storage or spread out on different characters. The number of enhancements on the market is not the same as the number of enhancements in the game. Secondly, if you don't have a lot of enhancements on hand--you probably don't have a lot of inf either. If you cannot afford things, you're not going to buy them on the market. Thus you're not going to be driving up demand. That means the ones buying all the stuff up on the market would be the people who are already sitting on a pile of cash and can mint a new 50 whenever they feel like it.

 

3. You don't address the most basic question: How many new 50s are created right now over say the course of a month? If you knew that number you could make some reasonable estimation about how an influx of 50s, some of which would fully enhanced with purchases from the auction house, would affect the market. But you don't make any kind of analysis like this and just assume the worst. If I play that game, I can assume that thousands of new 50s are made every month and the market can fairly easily bear an additional influx--maybe a new 50 every month. If you don't use it, they expire and do not accrue.

 

No argument, no matter how well reasoned, is going to get you past the fact that you are asking to be able to skip a large chunk of what the game actually consists of.

And ultimately the only argument for it is sheer laziness, you can have a 50 in a few hours (as opposed to the more numerous hours of actually levelling through the game), but even that is too long for you.

It's not going to happen.